


Of Dragons and Daughters

by Lilly_White



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Bromance to Romance, F/M, Summons & Summoning Meta, Wutai, aeris as First Class General, aeris in armour kicking ass, the Wutai war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 13:44:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8716180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilly_White/pseuds/Lilly_White
Summary: AU where Aeris is the one who grows up as ShinRa’s prodigal First Class General, and Sephiroth fights alongside her during the Wutai war. (Response to a prompt!)





	

° ° °

It was rumoured that General Gainsborough had killed her first dragon when she was five years old.

SOLDIERs passing her in the cantina would look at her bird-bone wrists and her sugar plum smile and wonder how someone who took on the role of mother so often could ever be bloodthirsty. Every grunt who had ever taken the SOLDIER exams had stories to tell, starry-eyed, about how she had found them in the grunt common room, hunched over their books, and warmed them up with a cup of tea she’d brewed; or how she’d picked them out of the corridor where they’d been shuffling, red-eyed with exhaustion, and showed them how to make their melee steps into a dance; or how she’d restored the childish wonder they’d lost after countless drills by showing them what real magic looked like, with her raw crystallised Mako clutched in her hands. Every man and woman in the SOLDIER HQ seemed to know her, or at least, they were familiar with the person she was within the city walls. They would ask each other – have you ever seen her in battle? Do you know anyone who was in Wutai with her? And those who had stayed quiet, because if there was one thing General Gainsborough never mentioned, it was the war.

 The staff she carried on her back hadn’t always been wrapped up in black bands. She had found it when she was a teenager, sticking out of the ruins of an Imperial household in Wutai. The ends were inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with motifs of dragons and flowers that always remained cool to the touch, and twin blades lining either end. She’d taken it back to camp, cleaned the blood off it. The SOLDIERs who were with her had never seen her so withdrawn. They wanted to ask about the dragon, now more than ever. But they knew not to disturb the General when she sat at the campfire, her eyes as indecipherable as mist.

The first time she met Sephiroth in a non-formal capacity was during the battle against the Leviathan. The emperor’s wife had summoned it to protect the Imperial palace, and it had shattered half a mountainside in pursuit of ShinRa’s men. The two First Class had sent away their troupes, since the Leviathan tore through entire battalions like a bullet through flesh, and they rapidly became aware that stealth was the only way to take it down. They had found themselves huddled together behind the stump of one of Wutai’s prized millennial sequoias, two child prodigies who had only ever met at ShinRa soirées with their peers forcing their hands together, or on opposite benches in Mako treatment waiting rooms; now tending to each other’s blood-spattered limbs  with gritted teeth and shaking hands. Sephiroth had been told by many of the General’s smiling lieutenants – be careful. It’s a blessing and a curse to be near her. He hadn’t asked them what they meant, but now he was getting an inkling as she radiated confidence, shouting at him to stand on that leg that should’ve been torn off if not for her healing spell. _Stand, SOLDIER!_ she shouted even when he cried that he couldn’t possibly _,_ and when he finally dared to put weight on his foot he realized there was no longer any pain. He’d laughed to feel so alive, and she’d hugged him around the shoulders, paying no mind to etiquette like the children that they were. They had led the Leviathan down into a rocky valley, and Sephiroth had been doubtful as the creature would surely use the river against them – but the General had her own plans. When the Leviathan was coated in the sparkling water and writhing golden in the afternoon sun, she had yelled across the valley – _FIRAGA! NOW!_ – and they had boiled the God in its own element. It had shrieked and coiled itself up and tried to strike back – Sephiroth had watched wide-eyed as the General leapt across the air at an inhuman height, landed on the God’s throat, and ran the blades of her staff into its scales in a long bloody line. It hemorrhaged blood until the river turned red, and when the General had staggered out of the water, she was painted in it.

With the defeat of the God, the sun had disappeared behind shredded grey clouds – but Sephiroth was too preoccupied by the General’s extensive burns to notice when it started raining. She crumbled into his arms as soon as he’d reached her. As he ripped the singed leather and wool from her skin, all he could hear was Gast’s words when the man had come to send him off alongside Hojo. _Protect my daughter, you hear? Protect her at all costs._ He remembered the conversations they had late at night in Gast’s Sector Five house, the fire glowing on their faces as they played chess. _She was never meant for this_ , _you know,_ he’d said once. _Her mother’s gifts should never have been used for war._ Sephiroth had wondered if that was the reason why the man always appeared so sad. He’d never thought to ask about the General’s mother. Perhaps he should have.

By the time her skin was healed, the storm had kicked up in earnest. He’d stripped off her armour and ruined top layers, so that she lay in a blood-spattered vest top and trousers against the still-warm silt of the riverbank. He’d never seen her looking so human. The giant shape of the Leviathan lay beyond them in the river, and Sephiroth was anxious to get away from it in case it gave one final spurt of life. But the General had got up to her feet, and stood facing the hunched, bleeding God in the battering rain. He watched mutely as she walked towards the river with her arms out, mud and red gunk sliding down her body with the rain.

‘We have to go!’ he shouted over the din of rolling thunder. But she only lifted a bloody hand up, watching the rain dragging the red down her fingers. ‘We’re in the middle of a thunderstorm and you want to stop and feel the rain?’ he shouted impatiently at her.

She turned her head a fraction and said, ‘You’re dismissed, SOLDIER. Gamma Base isn’t too far from here. Go and get a search party to gather the scattered men.’ 

He had no choice but to obey. When he had gotten to the ridge, he looked over his shoulder to see that his General was curled up against the Leviathan’s great turquoise head, hands on the bony orbits of its closed eyes.

°

That night around the campfire, after tending to the wounded they’d managed to find, their captains had forced the both of them to rest. They’d lain in the tent attributed to the higher ranking officials, both of them alone as the others were continuing to drag in their lost SOLDIERs and grunts. He’d watched General Gainsborough sitting up in her bunk with one of her slivers of raw Mako glowing in her hands, unable to sleep. Then, heart pounding at his defiance of etiquette, he’d got up and went to sit on the foot of her bed to ask what was wrong.

‘I killed a god today,’ she murmured in the dark.

Her eyes wore that blank expression that most took as a signal not to approach. But Sephiroth reached out, put his hand on hers, feeling the sharp Mako edges pressing into his palm.

‘You didn’t kill it,’ he said, though he knew he was hardly teaching her anything. ‘You can’t kill summons. You only kill an incarnation of them. They can always be summoned again.’

But all the logic in the world wasn’t enough to wipe that mist from her eyes. She was hunched over, her hair loose and covering her shoulders, silky smooth after she’d washed the blood from it. He reached out, brushed it away from her face. He couldn’t bear to see her so weak.

‘This isn’t the first glorified monster you’ve killed,’ he reminded her gently. ‘You’ve only ever killed to protect your men. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

She only snorted. ‘You’ve heard the stories about me, haven’t you? The Imperial family? The dragon?’ Sephiroth sat up a little straighter. ‘The dragon was supposed to be an exercise,’ she said. ‘They wanted to see if I could take it. But you know what I did? I befriended it. I could _hear it –_ ‘ She knocked against her head here, as though rattling a barely functioning device. ‘ – I could hear it in my head. It sounded like it was talking from a cavern miles underneath us, like a voice smoking its way out of a crack in the underworld. It was thousands of years old. And when I wouldn’t kill it – they did.’    

Her hands started shaking then – Sephiroth came forwards and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and she clung to him with her bird-bone fingers as she let the memory shudder through her.

‘Who are we to kill the gods?’ she murmured into his snow-white hair, and his hold on her tightened as he felt his heart aching. ‘How can anything matter, when the world is a signature away from destruction?’  

 

When they got back to Midgar after the peace treaty had been signed, they held hands in the helicopter. The first time she came to his flat with a ribbon in her hair and earrings dangling against her throat, he almost didn't recognise her, like she was wearing a costume of the person she was trying to be. It took her a long time to lose her hard edges, her calluses and lost, distant expression. And even years later when she’d light candles on his bedside table and straddle him, naked skin glowing in the dim lights of his bedroom; he could only ever see her as a blood-spattered queen, drenched in the gore of a writhing river god.    

° 

'Is it true?' the grunts asked in the corridors of the ShinRa HQ. 'Is it true that the General killed a dragon when she was five years old?'

Sephiroth smiled a grim smile as he inserted himself into their little group.

'The war is over,' he told them. 'Get back to your posts.'

° ° °


End file.
